If you are so sure that ” Palestine , the country, goes back through most of recorded history,” I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine :

When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital?
What were its major cities?
What constituted the basis of its economy?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
What was the language of the country of Palestine ?
What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine ?
What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

You are lamenting the “low sinking” of a “once proud” nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call “Palestinians” are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over — or thrown out of — the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day “Palestinians” to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won’t work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel ; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it “the Palestinian people” and installed it in Gaza , Judea, and Samaria . How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the “West Bank” and Gaza , respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called “Palestinians” have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel , and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation” — or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East . Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel ‘s ancient sovereignty over Gaza , Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?

Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip continued on Sunday morning, with six rockets hitting in the Eshkol Regional Council in the early hours. The IDF hit a number of targets in Gaza overnight, extending renewed fighting in Gaza by an additional day as efforts in Egypt to secure an extended ceasefire seemed slim.

Code Red pierced the silence at 6:13 am, warning of incoming rockets from Gaza in Eshkol. Two rockets exploded in open areas and there were no reports of damage or injuries. Three hours later, four additional rockets hit open areas in the regional council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the Cabinet Sunday, and said “Operation Protective Edge continues… Israel will not conduct negotiations under fire.” Since Hamas decided to renew rocket fire instead of unconditionally extending the ceasefire, Israel’s position has been that it refuses to talk while violence continues, the position has led Palestinian negotiators to threaten to quit talks.

During the night, sirens were also activated in two communities in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, but proved to be false alarms.

The Israeli Air Force has responded to the rockets fired on Israel, striking 20 targets throughout the Gaza Strip since midnight Saturday. One hundred and fifty targets have been hit since the end of the three-day ceasefire, which expired on Friday morning.

A 17-year-old teenager was killed in an IAF strike on Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian rescue teams said Sunday.

According to Ashraf al-Qodra, spokesman for the emergency services in Gaza, five Palestinians have been killed since the resumption of fighting on Friday morning.

On Saturday, over 30 rockets and mortar shells were launched into Gaza border communities. One of the rockets exploded in an open area in a community in Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported in this incident as well.

Meanwhile, a number of residents living near the Gaza border are still staying far away from home. According to an assessment by the regional councils, some 85-95% of the residents who left during the operation have now returned to their homes.

However, some of the families are considering leaving again and the Eshkol Regional Council has announced that it would assist the families who wish to do so.

Yanina Barnea, a resident of Nahal Oz, said: “There’s a lot of uncertainty along with frustration. We’re a border-adjacent community, in which we are unable to live a routine life. We refuse to go back to the reality that we lived in for 14 years. The education systems have stopped working.

“Hundreds of soldiers stayed there,” Barnea explained, adding that “council officials hired cleaning companies and the manager of the company forbade the workers from going because it’s dangerous there. And so, the nursery schools are unclean and not protected as well. We’re waiting for a new protected nursery school to be constructed, where we can put the children in temporarily. There’s a budget gap because no one is willing to pay.

She added that “there’s a back-to-normal state, but with a sprinkle of rockets.” Barnea further explained that “the children have been outside of the home for a month. This is not an easy task.”

Hamas warned over the weekend that it would continue to attack Israel as long as its demands are not fulfilled.

The warning came as a Palestinian delegation representing various groups, including Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, continued discussions with Egyptian security officials about achieving a long-term cease-fire with Israel.

The Hizbullah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted Hamas sources as saying that the movement would attack Tel Aviv on Sunday if its demands were not met by then.

The sources said that the Palestinian delegation has informed the Egyptians that its members would leave Cairo on Sunday if no progress is made in the cease-fire talks.

The head of the Palestinian delegation, Azzam al-Ahmed of Fatah, said on Friday that the team would not leave Cairo until an agreement is reached that complies with all Palestinian demands, including giving the Gaza Strip its own airport and seaport.

“There is no going back and the resistance will continue with full force,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “There will be no concessions on the demands presented by the Palestinian delegation in Cairo. Israel’s intransigence and foot-dragging won’t benefit it.”

Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas member of the delegation, claimed that Israel used Saturday as an excuse to stay away from indirect talks [with Hamas] in Cairo.

“Its army is continuing its aggression an shelling of the Gaza Strip on Saturday,” al-Risheq said. “This excuse is silly.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that his movement would not make any concessions regarding its demand to have a seaport in the Gaza Strip. “Such a port would be the Palestinian gate to the outside world,” he explained.

Senior Hamas official Ahmed Bahr reiterated his movement’s refusal to disarm. “The weapons of the Palestinian resistance will stay as long as Israeli occupation exists on our occupied land,” Bahr said. “The painful strikes of the resistance on Israel will drive the Israeli negotiator to accept all the demands of the resistance. This is the only language of negotiations they understand.”

Al-Ahmed, the delegation head, said on Friday that the Palestinian demands were “clear” and there would be no concessions on them, especially with regards to the airport and seaport in the Gaza Strip.

He told reporters in Cairo that the current cease-fire discussions would not continue indefinitely.

“We haven’t asked for anything new and that’s why Israel has no right to say this is permitted or that it not permitted,” the Fatah official said. “We have told the Egyptians that we will stay in Cairo until we reach an agreement to end the bloodshed and lift the siege on the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas killed hundreds of children in the construction of its extensive tunnel network, built partly to carry out attacks on children across the Gaza border in Israel. That report–confirmed by Hamas itself–emerged in 2012, not from the Israeli government, but the sympathetic Journal of Palestine Studies, in an article that otherwise celebrated the secret tunnel system as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli “siege” of the Gaza Strip.

The article, “Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege,” was published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Journal by Nicholas Pelham, who writes for the Economist and the New York Review of Books, according to his bio. It is receiving new attention thanks to Myer Freimann of Tablet, an online journal of Jewish affairs, whose post about Hamas’s use of child labor has gone viral in social media.

Pelham wrote that despite the economic success of the tunnels underneath the Egyptian border, which enriched Hamas through a thriving black market as well as arming it with new weapons, there were a few drawbacks. One of these was a “cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities,” he noted. “During a police patrol that the author was permitted to accompany in December 2011, nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials” (emphasis added).

Though some children likely worked voluntarily, the fact that there were public complaints about child deaths, to which Hamas felt compelled to respond at least superficially, is evidence of some amount of coercion. The number of deaths since 2012 has yet to be reported, but almost certainly exceeds the number Pelham reported.

To sum up: Hamas is not only using child labor, but likely child slavery, in building its terror tunnel network. While the world worries obsessively over the child casualties of Israeli attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza, it has ignored Hamas’s deliberate killing of hundreds of Palestinian children, over the objections of the local populace.

The knowledge that Hamas used children to dig tunnels for smuggling and terror up to 25 meters below ground changes the moral calculation of the war significantly. Not only does Hamas show extreme indifference to the lives of Palestinian children by using them as human shields, placing rockets in UN schools and the like, but it actively destroys those lives by sending Palestinian children to die underground in 19th century conditions.

Those defending the Palestinian resistance to Israel–and, equally, those demanding a ceasefire that would leave the Hamas tunnel network in place–are effectively defending a slaveholding regime more odious in moral terms than any the world has seen since the child soldiers of Joseph Kony’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, or the forced labor camps of the Nazis in the Second World War, who set children to work for the war effort.

It is rather ironic that President Barack Obama, who touted his own election in 2008 as an answer to the moral stain of slavery in America, would insist today on shoring up a Hamas administration that demonstrably uses child slavery. The Israeli government was reportedly shocked at how closely Obama’s ceasefire terms reflect the Hamas position. The American public ought to be shocked at how cynically Obama has cast morality aside.

It pains me to say that Hamas has started firing rockets at Israel again. The cease-fire period has ended and clearly the jihadists are not finished trying to murder Israeli Jews and Arabs and bring further devastation to Gaza.

“Jerusalem had hoped Hamas would agree to another 72 hour extension to allow time for Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams in Cairo to come to an agreement that would end Operation Protective Edge, which now enters its 32nd day,” reports the Jerusalem Post. ” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said his organization had rejected the idea of an extension, but would continue to negotiate.”

“Economic Affair Minister Naftali Bennett called on the government to pull its delegation out of the Cairo talks,” noted the Post. “Its sends the wrong message to Hamas for Israel to negotiate under fire, he said, explaining that what was needed was a military response. ‘Our response has to be harsh. Operation Protective Edge has not ended. Israeli citizens have to stand strong. The IDF said that 11 Gaza launched rockets and mortars had fired into Israel in the first hour after the cease fire ended. During that salvo, one rocket was shot down over Ashkelon and 7 more landed in open areas in the Hof Ashkelon region.”

Please don’t be discouraged. Please be praying for the Lord to restore calm and stability soon. But also pray that the people of Gaza — and the world — turn decisively against Hamas and its terrorist allies and that these evil forces are constrained and defeated once and for all.